‘GOLDBLUMIEST’
Portrayal of ruthless Marvel villain a function of actor’s idiosyncrasies
Thor: Ragnarok In theatres on Friday
At this point in his career, Jeff Goldblum probably doesn’t need to point out how devoted he is to his craft.
But in an interview with Postmedia, the veteran character actor stresses that he has a track record of going above and beyond for his art, particularly when it comes to enduring hours in a makeup chair. He did it to achieve that wonderfully horrifying transformation in The Fly (1986). He did it again for Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), which required him to play a blueskinned alien covered in fur.
“I’m nothing if not conscientious,” says Goldblum with a laugh. “I will, if necessary, let it be known, if it isn’t already known, suffer for my performance or art. I will sit in any kind of chair and get any kind of stuff put on me. However, having said that, I do prefer an easy sort of process and concentrating more on the fooling around part and the filming part.”
So while it may have caused some mild consternation among superhero purists, he was fine with director Taiki Waititi’s decision to forgo the blue skin when it came to creating a cinematic version of the Grandmaster, the 14-billionyear-old dictator Goldblum plays in Thor: Ragnarok. In the comics, the ruthless ruler of Sakaar has blue skin and alien features and wisps of white hair. In the movie, he doesn’t. He has a funky hairdo and cool clothes, but otherwise looks rather human. Waititi has said he didn’t want blue skin because Goldblum had already been there and done that in Earth Girls are Easy. But one gets the impression he also wanted Jeff Goldblum to be Jeff Goldblum: funny, eccentric and instantly recognizable.
In fact, the guidance Goldblum received from the New Zealand director was to avoid a theatrical, overly villainous or “comic-booky” take on the character. Instead, much of Grandmaster’s development would come through improvisation, something Goldblum was excited to try.
“He said ‘I think it’s going to be an outgrowth of something that I think you can do and something in your sweet spot of the Goldblumthemed variety,’” he says. “I guess I knew what he meant.”
In a film that probably has more broadly comic moments than any other Marvel adaptation, Goldblum steals every scene he is in with his trademark off-kilter timing and deadpan delivery. Grandmaster is the all-powerful and ruthless ruler of Sakaar, which is where our hero Thor (Chris Hemsworth) finds himself held hostage and forced to participate in gladiator-type battles that initially pit him against his old Avengers pal, The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).
There is a lot more going on throughout the movie, of course, including an impending apocalypse, a nasty new villain played by Cate Blanchett, some buddycomedy moments between Hemsworth and Ruffalo, and plenty of special effects. But Goldblum shines in every precious moment he is on screen. The actor did his due diligence, poring over old comic books to find out everything he could about the Grandmaster and reluctantly acknowledges that he is ostensibly a villain. Competitors from around the universe are enslaved and forced to fight for his amusement. So it could be argued that he is “self-serving and “not compassionate to every living creature,” Goldblum admits.
But we should cut him some slack. After all, he is immortal and has been around for 14 billion years, having come into being not long after the Big Bang.
“(He has) every superpower that has ever been demonstrated,” Goldblum says. “If we were in that position, you and I, I don’t know what we would do. We would have long since learned Italian and tasted every oyster that there is. Now, I just like to play games and have fun with people and test my insight and interest into the creatures of the cosmos and their infinite mysteries.”
Goldblum is no stranger to big-budget, tentpole movies. He starred in two Independence Day and two Jurassic Park movies, after all. But when it came to Thor, the actor was excited to work with Waititi, a scrappy indie filmmaker who Goldblum admired for his work on the New Zealand television series Flight of the Conchords and the 2014 improvised vampire movie What We Do in the Shadows. But he was also keen to enter the Marvel universe.
“They make these big, stateof-the-art epic productions, but they keep it somehow very loose and add fresh elements to it and unexpected surprises,” Goldblum says. “I think they want to make entertaining and popular movies, but I think they really have quality in mind, too.”
So far, the reviews for Thor: Ragnarok have been positive, with some critics singling out Goldblum for being at his “Goldblumiest” and in “full-Goldblum mode.” People Magazine praised the actor for “Goldblum-ing all over the place.”
“I wonder what it means to Goldblum,” he says with laugh. “Hey, I think the sun Goldblumed me!’ It could mean a lot of different things, good and bad.”